


More Like War

by waspabi



Series: Young Guns [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-14 19:17:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17514380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspabi/pseuds/waspabi
Summary: Sema glances at Nicklas over his shoulder. “I saw you steal that skate blade last season. You still have it?”Nicklas folds his arms over his chest."If you use it someday, you don’t want anybody saying you have a temper.Oh, Nicklas, he fly into rage at Don Cherry.No, keep everyone thinking you’re meek. Little Swedish mouse. Works hard, doesn’t give lip.Nicky Bäckström never do, no way.” Sema’s slow English, his almost impenetrable accent. He smiles. “That’s what you want.”





	More Like War

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Before the Fall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/528348) by [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow). 



> Like the first part of the series, this is a Caps AU of [Hockey at the End of the World](http://archiveofourown.org/series/23361) by ionthesparrow. It is possible to read this story without reading the original series, but the original series is excellent, so I'd recommend it to you anyway. 
> 
> Also like the first part of the series, I've compressed the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons into one and made a few needed changes to deviate from reality although, again, significantly less than you'd think. I didn't even get into some prime dystopian sports material, my pals. Expanded notes are at the end. 
> 
> Thanks to hockey coven for the help and all the ideas I stole from the groupchat brainstorming sessions, and thanks to everyone who left a comment or messaged or emailed me about this story--it really has meant so much, and made the process so much more enjoyable knowing that other people also cared about this tale. 
> 
> Warnings for PTSD, xenophobia, objectification of our athletes, on-ice violence, allusions to off-ice violence. If there's anything you're concerned about and you'd like more specific warnings, please do email me at kwaspabi at gmail. This is, yes, a WIP. I always finish my WIPs but this may take a while, so fair warning!

 

> "To me hockey is less like theater and more like war," Alex said. "You come out five soldiers against five enemy soldiers. You are trying to defeat them and take what they think is theirs." 
> 
> (Witt, April. "Goal Oriented." Washington Post, 26 November 2006.) 

 

 

Alex sees straight to the heart of the huddle: it’s Sema. Sema, lanky and familiar. Sema, floppy hair falling into his eyes, all four limbs and ten fingers accounted for. He’s wearing socks, so Alex can’t check for frostbite, but he’s standing. He’s standing in the room like he never left.

“Oh, shit,” Alex hears himself say, and he stumbles forward to wrap Sema up in his arms. Relief hits like a shot of morphine after a broken limb. He’s woozy with it, delirious.

“Where were you?” Nicke’s voice sounds distant, a faraway echo. Alex reaches back for him, holds tight when he offers his hand.

Sema’s chest rumbles as he speaks. “Special training.” 

Alex doesn’t have to look him in the face. He can hear it in Sema’s voice, in his heartbeat. He’s lying.

Alex runs careful fingers over Sema’s shoulders, his back, his waist. Sema wrenches out of his arms with an annoyed huff of breath. His low ribs, maybe. That’s where Alex pressed last. 

“Stand down, Sasha,” Sema grumbles, avoiding his eyes. 

“Glad to have you back, man,” Juice says, voice thick with sincerity. He claps Sema’s shoulder. “Shit, it got so quiet around here.” 

Alex needs to get Sema alone. He needs to check him over; he needs to talk to him in private. Sema will lie either way, but he’ll lie even more in front of people. 

“You hungry?” 

Sema shakes his head. “Nah.” 

Alex sets his jaw, and Sema sets his jaw back. He knows what Alex wants and he’s not going to give in. 

“We have conditioning,” Nicke announces, quiet voice firm. “We’re be late.” 

Alex worships the ground he stands on. Nicke gives him a little nod. Alex is pretty sure his face has collapsed into helpless adoration, which he’s fine with. 

Grumbles arise and subside as everyone makes their way out of import quarters until only Sema and Alex are left, standing alone in the kitchen. The sudden quiet holds them still, frozen in suspended time. Like a vacant rink. Center ice with nobody in the stands. 

“Jesus, Sanya.” Alex touches Sema’s face. Sema closes his eyes and lets Alex check his high cheekbones, his strong jaw, his broad snub nose. Nobody hurt him there. He’s pale, freckles faded. “Where were you?” 

“I told you. Special training.” Sema keeps his eyes shut.  

Alex checks Sema’s torso, pulls up his sweater to look for bandages or scrapes. “Frostbite?” 

“No.” 

Sema’s hands are fine. Broad palms, long spindly fingers, the familiar jut of his bony knuckles. Sema’s wrists are too important for anybody to mess with, but Alex checks them anyway. No swelling, no heat. 

“We have conditioning.” 

Alex doesn’t dignify that with a response. Sema doesn’t seem to expect one. He doesn’t move. He barely breathes. He must be injured somewhere. He wouldn’t be so white if Alex weren’t onto something. “Take your socks off.” 

Sema makes a face, but does it. “I told you,” he says, when his toes look fine. “What, do you want me to strip? Want to check me over like at the combine? Make sure your investment will pay off?” 

Alex stops, stung. “Fuck you, Sanya.” His stomach goes sour and sick for no real reason. He feels sweaty. He folds his arms over his chest. He does want Sema to strip. He does want to check him over like at the combine, running his hands over Sema’s ribs and his back, looking for new bruises, but now that seems—fucked up. Weird. Childish, almost. Two kids playing doctor in the stairwell, too young to know it’s strange. 

The silence weighs heavy over the room. Alex feels antsy. “I’m gonna go to conditioning.” 

“I’m not.” 

Alex chews his lip. “Okay, I won’t go either.” 

“We’re in enough trouble without you missing conditioning.” 

Alex frowns. “You know about that? They told you already? It’s just day passes. No big deal. We can live without day passes. Everything else has been fine, normal.”

Sema tilts his head back, eyes going skyward with exasperation. 

“Anyway, conditioning is optional on Saturdays.” 

Sema fixes him with an eloquent raise of his eyebrows. 

Alex sits down on the sofa, stubborn. “If you don’t go, I don’t go.” He turns on the television. He doesn’t even know what’s playing—local news, maybe some old movie. TV is useless in the offseason.

The cushions shift as Sema sits next to him. Alex lets out a breath, relieved, and pulls Sema into his side. 

At first Sema’s like a rigid toy solider, limbs bending reluctantly, his whole body stiff as plastic. Within five minutes Sema melts, his tense muscles going soft and pliable. He falls asleep shortly after, tipped half onto Alex’s lap. Alex keeps a hand on Sema’s ribcage and feels him breathe. 

Sema’s not usually a good sleeper. He’s touchy about space, positioning, sound. He can’t fall asleep with the television on, or the window open, or with a clock ticking nearby. Sema doesn’t seem to mind the television or the open window or the clock above the stove. His breath is deep and slow, and he twitches with dreams. 

Nicke returns from conditioning pink and damp, his hair in wet curly tendrils around his face. “He okay?” 

Nicke sits next to Alex on the sofa, close enough that Alex can smell the rink shampoo. Alex presses his face into Nicke’s soft sloped shoulder and breaths deep the smell of his unwashed hoodie, the rink soap on his skin. Nicke makes a surprised sound and touches his face. 

“He’s injured for sure but I don’t know what,” Alex mumbles into Nicke’s neck. “He won’t tell me.” 

Alex’s stomach clenches, thinking of how—maybe it was strange that he wanted to check all of Sema. Things had never been strange like that between them. Sema’s body was part of Alex’s body. They were the same. Nothing was strange for them. 

Nicke hums, considering. “He’s just back, Alex. He’ll say to you when he’s ready.” 

Alex makes a face. _When he’s ready_. It doesn’t seem fair. Alex should get to know right away. Alex would tell Sema if it was him. 

“It can’t be something too bad.” Nicke’s voice goes dark, bitter. “They don’t want to damage their property.” 

“You think it was the Navy? The Navy had him?” Alex can’t bear to think—not this. It can’t be this. He closes his eyes. 

Alex’s skull rides the wave of Nicke’s shrug. “Maybe higher up, the Union, but same thing. Don’t damage property. They will want nothing permanent, nothing so he can’t skate.” 

Alex has skated with a knife wound to the gut, a nose out of alignment, a lip torn open. Feds skated half of last season on a broken ankle. That’s not a comforting thought.

— — — 

Sema sleeps most of the day. He wakes for short intervals and doesn’t want to leave import quarters. Alex stays with him. Nicke leaves for meals and returns with food smuggled in his hoodie, squashed sandwiches and protein bars. The television shows endless reruns of the Stanley Cup Final, Sidney Crosby hoisting the Stanley Cup over and over again, but Alex still doesn’t turn it off. Sema sleeps through most of it anyway. 

“You’re a dumbshit,” Alex informs the recording of Zhenya Malkin. Zhenya wipes his ecstatic face, undeterred. Maybe Zhenya gets day passes, now that he’s won a Cup. Or maybe not.

The sun sets, and Sema wakes for long enough to shuffle out of the lounge and disappear into his room. Alex pauses in the hallway, tense. 

“What are you doing?” Nicke frowns and nudges Alex towards Sema’s doorway. “You are with him tonight, obviously.” 

Alex curls his toes up. He would rather die than let Sema out of his sight right now, but Nicke—what if Nicke’s next? His doorknob turning in the middle of the night, a strange hand pulling him out of bed. Loaded into a van in the dark. His room locked for weeks. Turning up a month later like Sema: strange, sleeping too much, an injury he won’t talk about. Alex can’t bear it. He won’t. He grabs Nicke’s hand in both of his. “You could come too?” 

Nicke raises his eyebrows. “Three hockey players in the small bed?” 

“We could fit.” Alex likes the thought of it. So much skin, the weight of their bodies. Being able to hold on to both of them at the same time. 

“No, Alex.” Nicke chews his lower lip and watches the door. “He’s just back. He doesn’t know me like he knows you.” 

Alex hates how Nicke is always right. Alex wants the three of them in Sema’s narrow bed, tangled up like puppies. He wants to make sure if the doorknob turns in the dark that he’ll be there, that he’ll be first, that he’ll be able to stand between them and whatever’s coming.

“Sleep in my room,” Alex says impulsively, holding Nicke’s hand too tight. “You’ll be next door.” 

Nicke’s mouth curves into an amused little smile. “Okay.” 

“You promise?” 

“I promise.” Nicke’s indulgent, and Alex feels desperate. He’ll beg if Nicke wants. Nicke doesn’t make him. 

Alex kisses Nicke’s knuckles and relinquishes his grip. He waits, expectant. Nicke doesn’t move. 

“I have to clean my teeth.” 

Alex screws up his nose. He wants to see Nicke climb into his bed. He wants to close the door and know Nicke is there, on the other side of the wall. Safe. “You’ll sleep in my room?” 

“Go.” Nicke nudges Alex towards Sema’s door. “I promised, and you will hear me, anyway. The walls are thin.” 

Alex nods. He watches Nicke go down the hallway, his big ass in his sweatpants, the quiet way he walks. It’s not so late. Nicke won’t be spirited away from the bathroom before lights-out. Juice and Flash are still awake, the television buzzing faintly from the common room. They’ll see if anybody comes in. 

Sema’s already in bed, hidden under the blankets so only his hair pokes out. 

Alex strips down to his underwear and crawls under the covers with Sema, just like they used to in Dynamo, and in Juniors, and in Portland. Sema’s still in his street clothes. Alex presses up against his back. 

“Why are you here?” Sema’s voice is hoarse, quiet. 

Alex pinches Sema’s stomach under his sweater. “Don’t ask questions you know the answer to.” 

Sema grunts and presses his face deeper into the pillow. 

Alex wiggles until he’s almost on top of Sema, like another blanket. “Sanya, where were you really?” 

Sema’s breath rattles long and slow. “Don’t ask questions you know the answer to.” 

Alex holds onto Sema’s big bony wrist. His pulse flutters rabbit-quick beneath Alex’s thumb. He feels a weird impulse to bite Sema’s neck, but swallows it down. He still wants to check him over. He still wants to see where he’s hurt. 

Something thuds against the wall. Nicke, letting Alex know he kept his promise. Alex grins and listens to Nicke moving around, imagines him climbing into the blankets that smell of them. Maybe he’ll wear Alex’s clothes to sleep. Maybe he’ll wear something with his number on it, with his name. Nicke, lying in Alex’s bed on the other side of the wall. Maybe he’ll touch himself. His hand easing into a pair of Alex’s shorts to palm his dick. 

Alex squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t think of that, or he’ll get hard. 

When they were young Sema used to grunt and huff and complain and move Alex around until he found a comfortable position. He doesn’t tonight. He falls asleep with Alex still draped over him, with his wrist in Alex’s grip. 

Alex falls into a restless sleep. They’ve traded. Sema sleeps like the dead, and Alex wakes up every few hours to panic and listen for Nicke on the other side of the wall. He wishes Nicke didn’t sleep so still. He wishes Nicke kicked and huffed and moved his pillows around, like Sema usually does. 

He only goes over to check Nicke’s still there once, which he feels shows maturity and restraint. 

Dawn creeps into Sema’s room, a slow trickle of cloudy light. Alex barely slept and he’s so relieved it’s morning, so fucking relieved he doesn’t have to be alone and bored with his brain churning out panic. 

The world feels surreal and strange, Alex’s exhaustion turning everything blurry and weird. 

Sema twitches, and when Alex pulls him closer he makes small sounds in the back of his throat. 

Sema sleeps curled up tight, head buried in his arms. Nicke sleeps on his back. He barely moves at all, doesn’t make a sound, lets Alex drape himself all over and just grunts and moves him when he gets crushed. Alex imagines sleeping between them. Holding Sema in place. Checking to see Nicke’s still there, still breathing, his heart a steady rhythm under Alex’s cheek. 

Alex slides his hand under Sema’s sweater. Hot skin, soft. Hairless, like Nicke, but he’s hard where Nicke is soft, a stark topography of muscle and bone. 

When Sema turned up in Moscow he was so skinny, all elbows. Coaches would try to send him over to where the ‘87s were training because he looked so young. He had an uneven buzzcut and his ears stuck out, and his hands were three times too big for his body. His hands were why Dynamo didn’t cut him for size. They thought he’d grow, and he did. 

Alex presses his face to the back of Sema’s neck. His hair is long now, feathery in the back. After Sema grew they were a matched set. Within a centimetre of the same height, almost exactly the same weight. Then Alex got bigger, and Sema didn’t. He must have twenty, thirty pounds on Sema now. Alex checks Sema’s ribs, his clavicle. Feeling for swelling, for bandages. His heart speeds up. Sema’s so warm. 

Alex rolls to his back, cheeks burning. Jesus, he’s hard. He’s gotten used to fucking in the morning, when Nicke is pre-verbal and grouchy. The soft stretch of underwear over his dick is unbearable, a tease. Sema’s a long line of heat and weight along his side. Alex presses over his dick, soft. He can’t stop himself from making a sound. 

He takes his hand away and eases out of bed. Alex needs to move or he is going to lose his mind. He can get everybody up and they can go lift some heavy shit, go run a little. The floor is cold. He hops from foot to foot for a minute to warm up. His cock's only half-hard now, less of an immediate concern. 

A bleary voice. “What's that?" 

Alex catches himself on Sema's desk. "Holy shit, Sanya, you fucking scared me," he says, heart pounding. “You asshole.” 

Sema sits up and fixes him with a clear-eyed stare. "What's that on your side?" 

Alex checks his ribs and grins at the sight. "I forgot. Nicky did it the night before you came back." He peels the bandage off to reveal his tattoo, his skin still slick and tender. 

Sema pulls his legs up to his chest and wraps his arms around his shins, fiddles his sweater over his fingers.

Alex frowns. "You don't like it? I wanted a Russian eagle but Nicky said he could just do this kind of bird." Alex prods the tattoo with his fingers, fascinated. 

"A Russian eagle.” 

"Yeah, a huge one. You know. Two heads, all over my side.” Alex turns to show the intended space. "Nicky said no." 

"That's good," Sema says. "It'd look stupid." 

Sema's eyes are warm. Alex isn't sure what he said right but he's glad for whatever it was.  

Alex climbs back into bed and bullies Sema over, ignoring his squawks of outrage. 

"A Russian eagle," Sema murmurs, once they've squabbled their way into a comfortable position. 

Alex pokes his forefinger into Sema's ticklish side. Sema jolts and curses, swatting at him. _I always find you_ , Alex thinks. It feels like a wish. 

Alex's night terrors have shrunk in the daylight. He boxes Sema up against the wall. Nicke is cocooned in Alex's blankets on the other side, big and warm and alive. Alex wants to go check, but it feels silly now. 

"Go back to sleep," he says, needlessly. Sema's already breathing soft and deep and even. Alex closes his eyes. 

* * *

Nicklas unscrews Alex's air vent and wiggles Fedorov's papers out of their hiding place.

Fedorov's meticulous handwriting marches neatly across five pages. The precise lines and spacing of unknown letters are infuriating. Then twenty pages of mystery numbers, grouped in twos or threes. Double-sided. Some of the pages are crumpled, yellowing with age, and some are new, fresh bright white. More handwriting after that, seven pages, not Fedorov’s. Nicklas can’t make sense of any of it.

Fedorov could find imports. He sent Alex around Washington to leave messages in hiding places. Delivery, pickup. Papers in and out of Verizon. What else did he do? What else did he know? Who did he have on the outside?

Nicklas chews disconsolately on the collar of Alex's shirt and pages through the papers again, as if one more pass will reveal their secrets. 

Alex won't want to look at this now. He'd explode with protective fear at the sight of the papers, threaten to burn them again, probably. Nicklas shouldn't remind him of their existence. He's probably half-forgotten in his relief at Sema's reappearance, anyway. 

A sharp rap at the door. Nicklas freezes. 

"Quiet Reflection in fifteen," Juice calls glumly, and moves on to the next door without waiting for a response. 

Nicklas scowls. North America is a fanatical wasteland. He stows the papers back in their hiding place and pulls his own sweatshirt on to cover Alex's shirt.

He pauses before he opens the door. Juice wouldn’t report him for immorality, probably, but Nicklas isn’t keen to test his theory. Stomach churning, Nicklas darts out of Alex’s room. Juice is down at the other end of the corridor, oblivious. He takes a breath. 

Alex bounds out of Sema's room with unnerving shamelessness, manic bloodshot eyes, still wriggling into a wrinkled shirt. Nicklas watches Alex's thick torso disappear under the fabric. The shirt's too tight. The barrel of his chest stretches the Navy logo. Nicklas wants to push Alex down and fuck him stupid. He does not want to go to Quiet Reflection. 

Sema mumbles from inside the room, his raspy voice too quiet for Nicklas to make out. 

"Yeah, we got to," Alex calls back, finger-combing his hair into the vague concept of order. He knocks his fist gently against Nicklas’s and smiles, warm and private. "Morning." 

Nicklas feels his face collapse into something simpering and tries to tamp it down. 

Sema shuffles into the corridor. He's wearing a huge black sweater and he looks like a bat. "What the fuck has gotten into you guys?" 

"Spiritual growth," Nicklas says in mangled English, quoting the Morality Officer. 

Sema frowns at him. 

"We want back the day pass,” he explains in Russian. 

"Oh." Sema folds his arms over his chest. "You think it's enough?" 

Nicklas shrugs. Personally he thinks they won’t be getting any day passes until they start winning games, but Alex seems to think this could work. He came up with the idea when Sema was missing. Nicklas didn’t have it in him to argue. 

"Just an hour," Alex says, and leads them down the corridor. "Then we can go have fun. We can play basketball. Juice made a hoop, have you seen it yet?" 

Alex bounds towards the door like he actually wants to go to Quiet Reflection. Nicklas follows, watching Sema peer into the empty rooms. 

"How many?" 

Sema's voice is low. It usually is, but Nicklas can tell he doesn't want Alex to hear. 

Nicklas tries to count. Sema's arm keeps bumping into his. He smells like Alex. "Fedorov, Kozlov, Nylander. Kolzig. Huet. Brashear from the North Americans." 

Sema pulls his mouth to the side.

Nicklas watches Sema take in the long hallway of empty rooms. “I hear we will get some with us from Hershey. Goalies.” 

"What's taking you two so long?" Alex claps his hands by the door, impatient. He already has his shoes on. "We're gonna be late, pick it up!” 

"You go, if you are so happy to get civilized,” Nicklas snaps, cross at the interruption. 

Sema's crooked smile flickers over his tired face, sly and fleeting. Nicklas almost trips in surprise. 

"Late," Alex howls, unchastened. "All our work for nothing! We’ll have to start over!”  

Nicklas speeds up. He really doesn't want to keep going to these. Brooks Laich is always so happy to see them. 

* * *

Sanya lies under the weight of Sasha's hot heavy body and thinks of the great grey owl. He never saw one alive. Hardly anyone did. People called them phantoms, or ghosts. Once the factories shut down, Sanya would stand on the shores of the Yenisei at dusk and hear them call to one another. Deep, echoing sounds.  

Sanya's leg aches. 

Great grey owls live up to forty years. Longer than many people. Longer than most people Sanya has known. 

The pain sits deep in the muscle. A strain like a pull, but set-in, old like a sore back. Too deep to reach. 

Once in Chelyabinsk Sanya saw an eagle owl perched on a rusty car mirror in an abandoned lot. The kids had been with him. A couple of them hollered with joy and scared it off, then watched crestfallen as it disappeared into the clouds. Sanya didn't know how to explain to them that you can lose something by loving it too much. 

Sasha snores. Sanya breathes through the pain. 

Sanya eases out from underneath Sasha’s body. Sasha grumbles something indistinct. 

“Gotta piss,” Sanya tells him, removing Sasha’s hand from his arm. 

Silence swallows him whole in the deserted hallway. The hulking machine of Verizon Center churns all around them, but import quarters feel like a condemned building. 

Sanya touches the wall. Cold concrete. 

The Navy constructed their import quarters like every other team did, small, until George McPhee began acquiring hoards of foreigners and the Navy realized they had nowhere to store them. Zubie once said they put plastered-over plywood down the middle of the rooms and that’s why the walls are so thin. In Zubie’s day there were so many imports that the rookies had to bunk together. They had twice, nearly three times as many import players as North Americans. 

Sanya remembers how this hallway was. Crowded, dense with bodies. Now import quarters is stripped mattresses and empty dressers, doors hanging open. Maybe George McPhee changed his strategy. Maybe he thinks imports aren’t worth the risk anymore, after Feds and Vitya. After him. 

Sanya trails his fingertips down the wall until he touches a door frame. Peter Bondra lived here. After him, Jakub Klepis. Klepis disappeared one summer and Cristobal Huet moved in. One name after another, like a tree trunk’s rings. Imports no one remembers anymore. Trivia questions, rare hockey cards. Huet was strange. French, but not Anglo French. The Blue & Red guys didn’t seem to know what to make of him. He’s in the West now. Feds used to say it was better there. 

The next door is mottled with pits in the scarred wood. Nylander. Sanya thinks he had children. He had that look about him. A cored apple. 

Sanya moves down the corridor towards Kolzig’s room. Kolzig loved to demolish his stick on the crossbar, raging about the egregious offenses of the skaters. How dare Sanya get one past Kolzig during practice, who did he think he was? Sanya tries to imagine Kolzig moving into this room for the first time, a fresh barcode tattoo and an unlined face. He can’t picture it. Kolzig was always a hardened veteran. Steady as an old oak. 

Strange. Sanya misses him.

Sanya turns on the television in the common room. The Union anthem blares from the speakers and Sanya curses and scrambles for the volume controls. Silence again. Sanya takes a breath, and then another. His hands shake. He puts the remote down. 

On the grainy television screen, a flag waves gently in an invisible breeze. Last year, the local stations sometimes had programs all through the night. Repeats of games or new features, for people on odd shifts at the factories. When they didn’t, the television played the anthem all night long. The same flag in the same breeze. 

Sanya switches the television off. 

The kitchen cupboards are barren. No one’s gone out and bought a jar of peanut butter with their stipend, not without a day pass. Sanya pokes through the rubbish bin and flicks through crumpled newspapers. Local sections only. Russian Machine, Alex Ovechkin Gains Muscle, Ovechkin’s Killer Instinct. Sanya stuffs the papers deep into the bin. 

Sanya slips out of import quarters into the shared players’ lounge, dusty as ever. The door to the roof deck sticks a little as Sanya eases it open, squeaky with frost. 

Washington is dark, moonlit. No snow. No lights either; the power is out again. Or maybe they shut the power off at night now. 

Sanya crouches down and examines the frigid ground, fallen leaves crystallized in slick ice. He glances at Verizon. The dull red glow of the backup power. His own dark window. Sasha’s, next to his. 

Sanya peers through Sasha’s foggy window and is unsurprised to see Nicklas, his face very young in sleep. Soft cheeks, foxy face. Weak chin. Sanya feels oddly comforted. He touches the windowsill. He tries the latch, but it won’t open. 

Beyond the glass, Nicklas sits up in Sasha’s bed and rubs his eyes. Sanya steps back, but Nicklas isn’t fooled. He yawns and slides out of bed, making his way towards the window. He pries it open, frowning. “Alex is not here.” 

Sanya shrugs. 

“Did you get, um.” Nicklas mimes locking a door. “Out?” 

Sanya shrugs again. 

“I can learn you how to open it,” Nicklas says, pulling a hoodie over Sasha’s worn t-shirt. He climbs out the window in a hoodie and sweatpants, still wearing his house slippers. He’ll ruin them this way, but Sanya doesn’t say anything. 

Nicklas reaches up and pulls the window shut, locking them out. “This is only working with this kind windows. Stupid. They think if they make it all…” Nicklas waves his hand at the dark building. “Needing power? It’s better, but it’s not. The alarms are off at night. Saves money.” 

Sanya watches Nicklas jam a screwdriver into the window sash. A series of clicks, and Sasha’s window slides reluctantly open again. 

Nicklas is lucky they don’t run the cameras at night. 

* * *

“Fuck,” Alex howls as the basketball smashes into a table lamp and shatters the lightbulb.

Nicklas gets the broom. They keep it close; this is the third lamp they’ve broken this summer. 

“Fuck, I wish we had more space,” Alex grumbles, shaking glass off the lamp cover. 

“There’s only five of us left. How do we not have more space?” Juice pauses, half in the act of sweeping glass shards into the dustpan. “We do have space. The other bedrooms, right? Nobody’s using them.” 

Nicklas sits back on his heels. “No. No one is using them.” 

Alex’s eyes go bright with wild glee. “We could have a basketball _room_.” 

They spend the rest of the day rearranging furniture. They stack bed-frames and desks in the empty rooms at the end of the hallway, then relocate the kitchen table and chairs into Kolzig’s old room right off the common area. 

“Our dining room,” Flash says importantly, before he nearly drops a side table on Juice’s foot. Juice curses violently in Slovak, and then Flash cracks up and drops the table for real. 

“Fuck you,” Juice mutters, rubbing his foot. “We’re not going to get shit for this?” 

Nicklas doesn’t look directly at the cameras. He feels for them, notices them in the corners of his eyes. High up on the walls like dark eyes. A faint pressure. “They would stop us by now,” he says, quietly. “They see.” 

Juice shrugs. “Cool.” 

Nicklas turns his back on the camera in the corner and lets himself grin as wide as he wants. 

Nicklas isn’t the only one feeling giddy. It’s so stupid. They’re not doing anything outrageous: setting up their own dining room is hardly revolutionary. It still feels triumphant to cart the furniture into Kolzig’s room. Even Sema gets into the project. He’s not especially keen on moving furniture, but he does seem to enjoy making decisions, arguing violently with Alex for fifteen minutes about whether they should move the TV out of the common room or not, and then storming off in a huff.  

Sema disappears after dinner, but the rest of them stick around to argue about the TV and whether they should move the ping pong table out of the kitchen. In the end, the ping pong table stays put, and Juice and Flash head off to bed with Alex and Nicklas trailing behind.

“I forgot something,” Alex says, and doubles back down the hallway. 

Nicklas eyes Sema’s closed door. Alex will be with him again tonight. 

Nicklas stares at himself in the mirror as he cleans his teeth. He shouldn’t feel this lonely at the prospect of sleeping alone. He slept alone for most of his life. He’s being ridiculous, and a baby. 

Nicklas spits in the sink. He doesn’t feel any better, which rankles. He wishes they had hockey. He wants to trip somebody. 

“Hi, Nicky. You done?” Alex leans in the bathroom doorway, expectant. 

Nicklas rinses his toothbrush and puts it in the row with the others. Five toothbrushes. Five imports. The bathroom is unfathomably cleaner than it was last season, but Nicklas would rather the mess. 

“Yes,” he says, turning back towards Alex. 

“I have a…” Alex shrugs, smiling down at the floor. His ears flush red. “You come see?” 

Nicklas assumes he wants to ask him to sleep in Alex’s room again, but instead, Alex leads Nicklas into Fedorov’s old room. 

They used this room for storage. A stack of unused desks, a few bed-frames. A barricade of defunct furniture. Nicklas frowns at Alex. Alex grins and nudges him through a narrow space between the stacked furniture and the wall. 

Three spare single mattresses squeeze together on the scarred wood floor, almost obscured by a tangled mess of spare blankets. It looks like a cave, or a nest. 

“Flash and Juice won’t notice, and anyway if they did they wouldn’t care.” Alex shifts from foot to foot. “What do you think?” 

Nicklas looks down at the bed-nest. Sema’s already asleep, or pretending to be, curled up facing one of the walls. He’s so buried in blankets Nicklas didn’t notice him at first. Nicklas glances at Alex. Hope leaks all over his transparent face.  

Nicklas touches Alex’s hand. “Okay.” 

Alex lets out a breath and beams at him, so earnest in his relief it hurts to look at him. 

“I’m just going to—one thing.” 

Nicklas squeezes through the space between the desks and the wall and picks his way through import quarters. He fills a spare box with things that make noise—the broken lamp, marbles, old silverware—and carts it back to the room. He tests his system three times, until he’s sure the box will tip over when the door opens.  

Alex watches curiously, leaning against the tower of desks.  

“Good,” Nicklas says finally, nudging the box back into place. 

Alex crawls into the bed nest and waits until Nicklas is settled before draping himself over his chest. 

“It’s nice, right?” Alex’s satisfied smile presses into Nicklas’s throat. He stretches his limbs out until his knuckles graze Sema’s sweater and his leg presses up against the back of Sema’s calves. Sema mumbles in his sleep. 

“It’s hot,” Nicklas says, complaining mostly for show. He doesn’t mind. The cave of furniture and blankets folds them in a dense cocoon. 

Alex hums, sleepily rubbing his prickly face against Nicklas’s throat. He’s out in less than a minute: snoring, mouth half-open, clutching Nicklas’s shirt with one hand.

Nicklas strokes Alex’s hair and breathes through the painful crush of tenderness strangling his heart. 

— — — 

Even if Mike Green hadn’t assured him that North Americans usually went home over the summer, Nicklas might have guessed. 

The imports invent games out of a deflated ball and an empty hallway, bowl empty bottles of sports drinks and construct basketball hoops out of clothes hangers. They’re used to the closed walls of Verizon Center. 

The North Americans are not. The Anglos go strange and manic as the summer progresses, restless and desperate for entertainment, prowling the vacant streets of Washington every day. 

It’s a warm summer. The frost melts by mid-morning. No snow. Sometimes Nicklas doesn’t even need a hat. Nicklas sits on the roof-deck and watches the North Americans sign out and leave through the double-paned glass doors in the mornings and evenings. No day pass needed for Anglos. They stroll down the street, laughing. 

Mike Green doesn’t leave the ice center as much as the rest of the North Americans. He wiggles his way into the imports’ games of basketball and two-touch, comfortable despite having no idea what anyone is saying half the time. 

“Your face was made for balls in it,” Greenie shouts when Nicklas takes him out in two touch, when he’s waiting for a turn on the treadmill, when Juice takes the last bread roll at dinner. 

Juice guards his plate. “Why’d you have to teach him that?” 

Sema doesn’t answer, but his eyes tilt up at the corners, amused. He looks down at his plate like he has a private joke with the spinach. 

“I tried to teach him _your mother looks like a camel_ , but it’s too hard for him,” Alex says through a mouthful of food. 

Greenie makes another grab for Juice’s tray, and Juice yelps, yanking it out of his grasp. 

“Your face was made for balls in it,” Greenie repeats glumly, and throws a straw wrapper at Juice’s head. 

The wrapper lands, slowly and inevitably, in Juice’s milk. He looks personally betrayed, and Nicklas can’t keep from laughing. 

At their end of the table, the North Americans chatter on and on about some movie, but Brooks Laich isn’t paying attention. He’s watching Greenie. 

Nicklas watches him out of the corner of his eye, careful not to get caught looking. 

“Are you going to eat that?” Alex reaches his fork towards Nicklas’s plate. 

Nicklas pushes his plate towards him silently, and accepts the bread roll Alex offers in return. 

“Uh, your face was made for balls in it?” Greenie gestures between Nicklas and Alex, comically offended.

At the other end of the table, Brooks Laich purses his mouth. 

Nicklas eats his second bread roll to the sound of Greenie’s laments. Brooks Laich doesn’t stop glancing at Greenie, his jaw working.

— — — 

“Your face was made for balls in it,” Greenie huffs at the locked door to the gym the next morning. 

Nicklas and Greenie have been waiting for a staff member to come unlock the door for twenty minutes. Verizon’s on a skeleton crew, and there’s some sort of youth meeting going on in one of the conference rooms. Alex gave up ten minutes ago, but Nicklas and Greenie held out.

Nicklas hates talking in English. He can understand it okay by now, but dredging the words up takes so much effort. He takes a breath, formulating his sentence. “We… play other thing?”

“I guess,” Greenie says, kicking the locked door. 

There’s probably a basketball game going on in import quarters, but Nicklas doesn’t know if Greenie is allowed in there. Maybe nobody cares. Still, it feels odd to invite him. Invasive. 

Nicklas offers a weak alternative. “Run in hall?”

“Your face was made for balls in it,” Greenie says in Russian, and then makes a face. “Oh, dude, did I tell you? Last night Brooksie was all, _I’m worried about you, Mike_.” He affects a Brooks Laich voice, earnest and deep. “He’s like, _It’s fine to be friends with those guys, Greenie, I mean, heck, I’m friends with them! But all this stuff, this learning Russian and stuff, it’s — —_. _Can’t be doing that, bud._ ” 

“It’s what?” 

“— —,” Greenie repeats. 

Nicklas lifts his hands palms up, _I’ve got nothing_. “I don’t understand.” 

Greenie frowns, thick eyebrows pulling together. “I don’t really know what it means either, to be honest. Brooksie sounds like a Morality Officer sometimes, I swear. Anyway, he tells me all that and then he’s like, _You’re a good kid, Mike. I don’t want you getting in trouble about this. We’re all under the — right now, buddy, so it’s really important right now_.” Greenie rolls his eyes. “Brooksie’s great, but like, come on, dude, right?” 

Nicklas makes a sound that could be agreement, possibly, depending on how generous Greenie is in his interpretation. 

“Anyway, I think you should teach me some Russian skating words. You guys are always yelling around and I never know what the fuck’s going on.”

Nicklas blinks once, twice.

“What?” Greenie thumps the locked door again. “You guys know all the English stuff but you don’t use it, so I better know Russian stuff.” 

“Okay, but it’s your funeral,” Nicklas tells him in Swedish. 

Greenie nods, enthusiastic. “Yeah, like that. What’s that mean?” 

Nicklas teaches Greenie the basics, _deep, shoot, head up, back door_ , until a security guy comes to unlock the door, but he’s not thinking about Russian. He’s thinking about Brooks Laich. 

Greenie tags along with Nicklas all afternoon, then splits off to watch a movie with the North Americans after dinner. Nicke leaves the cafeteria with the rest of the imports. He hangs to the back, ignoring Juice’s long monologue about how the cafeteria makes too many chicken breasts and not enough pasta. Alex agrees, apparently. He also doesn’t think they serve enough cheese.

Juice sprawls on the couch in the common room once they get inside. “You guys wanna watch a TV? I think they’re playing a movie tonight.” 

Sema doesn’t answer. He’s already halfway towards the nest room. Nicklas lingers back with Alex. 

“Nah,” Alex says, jerking his head towards Sema’s retreating back. “We’re gonna go.”  

Juice yawns, stretches. “Suit yourself. What do you guys do in there, anyway?” 

Juice doesn’t look suspicious. Nicklas feels his skin go hot anyway, and then indignant at his own embarrassment. There isn’t anything to be suspicious _of_. They’re not doing _anything_ in there. They just sleep, or read, or play cards, or make up stupid games with balls of tape. Tangled up, close together. Nicklas is half hard the whole time, practically, but they don’t _do_ anything. Him and Alex have been disturbingly, unbearably chaste. He shouldn’t feel this caught. 

Alex shrugs, unperturbed. “Wrestle.” 

“Typical,” Juice says, laughing, and turns the TV on. “Have fun.” 

Nicklas rides a wave of humiliation down the hallway, his stomach plunging. _Wrestle_. They do, sometimes. Sema feline, coiled muscle, and Alex a wrecking ball. Nicklas is mean, sneaky. He wins a lot of the time, and then he needs to conspicuously go to the bathroom to hide his hard-on.

They don’t wrestle tonight. Sema looks tired. Drawn. He lies on his stomach and watches Alex and Nicklas play cards, his chin on his folded hands. 

“What is…” Nicklas tries to remember the words Greenie said earlier, unfamiliar English sounds. “— —?” 

Alex squints. “No idea.” 

Sema goes conspicuously still in that way he does when he knows something but he doesn’t want to share. 

“— —,” Nicklas repeats, slower. He thinks he got the sounds wrong. He tries it again, reversing the vowels. “— —?” Cultural something, maybe? 

“— —,” Sema mumbles in Russian, which doesn’t help. Nicklas doesn’t know the words in Russian either. 

“Oh!” Alex’s eyes flash with recognition. “— —. Like, uh. Don Cherry. You know, he says there are too many Russian guys in hockey; it’s ruining the game because we don’t know those good Anglo values.”

Nicklas frowns at his cards. _Cultural_ _something_ , then. Dissolution, maybe. 

Mike Green needs to be careful being heard speaking Russian, because they are all under the… The what? Not the knife. Nicklas knows how to say knife in English. Scrutiny. They are under scrutiny, and Brooks Laich thinks people are going to watch Greenie and what, make an example out of him? Think he’s polluting North American culture? Or worse, assume that he was working with Fedorov and Kozlov. Or still is? A sympathizer, or an enemy of the state.

Mike Green ought to watch himself, and Brooks Laich knows why, or thinks he does. 

Maybe it’s good that Fedorov’s papers are locked in Alex’s air vent and have been all summer. Maybe they do need to be careful. The imports may be confined to Verizon, but the Anglos aren’t. Mike Green could be smuggling messages in and out of Verizon all day until curfew, if he wanted. 

Alex draws another card, making a face. He’s awful at poker. “Why do you want to know?” 

Sema’s eyes flick up towards Nicklas, shrewd. 

“Something I heard,” Nicklas half-lies. He’ll bring up Fedorov’s papers when Alex is calmer, when the imports are back in McPhee’s good graces. “You know, at Quiet Reflection.” Alex falls asleep during every Quiet Reflection. There’s no chance he remembers specifics. 

Sema raises an eyebrow. Nicklas ignores him. 

“Flush,” he says, and puts his cards down.

* * *

Sanya sleeps for a month and then he can’t sleep at all.

He doesn't know why. He sleeps for fourteen hours a night for weeks and abruptly he's restless and wakeful, tossing in the storm of sickly dreams. He wakes up in darkness with sweaty palms and a racing heart.  

Panic claws at his ribs. He wants to bury himself under Sasha's body but Sasha is draped over Nicklas, half-smothering him as always. 

Sanya pulls his knees to his chest. The room pulses like a heart. The malevolent tangle of hulking furniture about to crush them. Every creak a footstep. Every groan in the walls a voice.

Sanya closes his eyes and conjures up his old walk to the river. First his room at Falcon: the narrow bed, scratchy wool blankets, magazine cutouts on the cinderblock walls. The squeaky door. He has to be careful if he doesn’t want anybody tagging along. Sanya slinks down the stairwell, ducks under the plexiglass windows to the practice rink, skirts the noisy rec room until he pushes the huge iron door open and slips into the alley. Old snow and cigarette butts, piercing cold air: he’s free.

Sanya clambers over the towering snowbanks alongside the big road. When he was small there were hundreds of hulking trucks, rickety cars, roaring motorcycles. No more. He crosses the big road and cuts through the abandoned gas station. The cracked pavement gives way to mud and rocks, dirt and puddled saucers of ice that Sanya loves to crack with his boots. 

He passes old storage containers, faded cornflower blue and dusky sunset pink. A wide field of dead grass and clumped snow. The dark wooden houses that climb the hill from the riverbank, fences repaired with scrap for generations. Sanya could visit old Anastasia Fedorovna in the smallest of the houses, but he doesn’t turn towards her bedraggled fence. Sanya skids down the icy hill and stomps through the tangled brush to his favourite spot. 

The cement dock juts out over the water. When Sanya sits on the cold surface he is veiled in dead branches and vines like a grandmother’s scarf. Great swelling silence. The cement block beneath him, the glassy river reflecting the smoke. The dark brambles of Tatyshev Island, the distant rise of the Sayan Mountains to the south. A beauty that nests in Sanya’s ribcage, that swells underneath his skin. 

A sharp sound cuts from the glass window and Sanya jolts back to horrible reality, his heart clenching, his hands slick with sweat. 

"Sema?" 

Sanya grabs the blankets. He presses his back to the wall. 

"Sema, it's Nicklas.”  

Sanya knows they'll turn the lights on soon. Bright, fluorescent. A cement block of windowless space. 

"Do you know where you are?" 

Sanya closes his eyes. He doesn't like the bright flash when the light hits, how he can't see at all for a dizzy minute. Anyone could be coming. Anyone could be right in front of him. 

"Fedorov's old room in Verizon Center. With me and Alex. Sasha.” 

Sanya's mouth is bitter. His back aches. His leg. 

Something pries at Sanya's tense hands. His fingers feel like calcified claws. His knuckles won’t straighten. Sanya opens his eyes. Nicklas kneels in front of him, his hair falling into his face as he wrestles with Sanya’s uncooperative hands. 

Sasha snores on, mouth open, oblivious.

"You are needing to cut your… These," Nicklas mumbles, forcing Sanya to stop digging his fingernails into his palms. "Hard… finger part. What is the word?" 

“Nails." Angry red marks litter Sanya’s palms. Nicklas stopped him before he drew blood. 

“Nails," Nicklas repeats, frowning. "You have a special word for them? In Swedish we say them… I don't know how to say in Russian, but it's like finger-thing. Part of the finger. We are using the word." 

“You can, in Russian.” Sanya looks down. Nicklas is still holding Sanya's hands in his soft palms. Sanya's hands look boney and enormous next to Nicklas’s, his fingers spidery long. Nicklas is right; his fingernails need cutting. “But different. Part of the fingertip.”

"It's harder this way. I won't remember how to call it.” Nicklas's hands are warm. He tests the pad of his forefinger against the sharp edge of Sanya’s fingernail. 

Sanya rests his head against the wall. He feels so exhausted, so bone-deep tired, but he knows he still won't be able to sleep. "Don't tell him.” 

Nicklas looks at Sanya from under his pale eyelashes. "Tell him what?"

“That my fingernails need cutting."  

Nicklas gives him a little ghost of a smile. "I'm right back," he says, and then he extracts himself from Sasha's sleepy grip and squeezes through the space in the furniture wall towards the door. 

Sanya listens to Nicklas move his noisy box around. The hallway door opens, and then it shuts again. 

In Nicklas’s absence Sasha gravitates towards the heat of Sanya’s body, grumbling incoherently until he has one huge arm curled around Sanya's leg like a possessive hibernating bear. He presses his scratchy face into Sanya's thigh. His snuffling snores resume, and Sanya carefully ignores the heavy golden curve of Sasha’s shoulder, the hair on his thick forearm, the blunt loveliness of his calloused hands. Sanya flexes his fingers. He ignores Sasha's open mouth, his wet breath. He has years of practice. He's accomplished. He stays perfectly still. 

Nicklas reappears with a tiny pair of silver scissors, identical to the ones staff keep in the locker-room to cut tape. 

Nicklas is an inveterate thief. Sanya appreciates that about him. He takes the offered scissors and trims his nails over the side of the bed-nest. 

Nicklas crawls back into bed, yawning. He watches Sanya clip his nails in companionable silence, chin on his folded knee. 

Sasha yawns and stirs, absently mouthing at Sanya's sweatpants. 

"You guys awake already?" Sasha is blearily put-out, upset to be missing Sanya's adventures in nail-care. "Nicky always takes five years to wake up. Why you awake?" 

Sanya meets Nicklas's eyes. His stomach twists.

"You are snoring so loud I think there is a storm, Alex,” Nicklas says, and laughs when Sasha tackles him. 

Sanya returns to his fingernails. It takes a few attempts before his hands stop shaking enough for him to cut. He wonders if any of them will bother cleaning up his nail trimmings. Probably not. 

They have conditioning at noon. It's strange to leave the bedroom, strange to blink in the bright light of the hallway and see other people. Juice squabbles at Flash in Slovak and Flash squabbles back in Czech and they understand each other perfectly, which is for the best because nobody else does. It’s unsettlingly normal. They seem like relics from another season, another world. 

It's a strange summer. Sanya doesn't think he's imagining things. Half the staff is gone, and the ones who stayed walk around like there's something important going on three blocks away, and they’re late. Last summer Ted Leonsis dropped by to check his livestock once a week. He wanted to watch them sweat on the bicycles, on the ice. Not anymore. Sanya hasn’t seen him since playoffs. 

Everybody pretends this is normal. They go to meals, they go to practice, they go to conditioning. A few times a week they go to Quiet Reflection to genuflect to the gods of North America. 

Nobody checks in on them. Nobody moves the furniture back, or makes them sleep in the right rooms. Import quarters are an entirely separate world. 

Sanya watches Sasha's black-edged PerT tags swing and catch in his chest hair. His balls shifting beneath his tight red leggings. 

Nicklas laughs at something Mike Green says, his small sharp teeth flashing in the light. He’s blotchy and damp, glistening in the lights. 

Sanya heard them at night. The wet sounds, Sasha’s deep groans, what they would say to one another. 

Sanya’s stomach goes cold. He focuses on the squat jumps, keeping his eyes to himself. 

After training, Sanya shuts his door behind him and surveys his bedroom. Strewn blankets, an old stick up against the wall. They spend all their time in Fedorov’s old room now. His room feels unfamiliar. 

Sanya lies down in his bed and thinks of that, thinks of their cramped makeshift hideaway. The mattresses pushed together, the tangled mess of blankets. Sanya remembers the wet sounds he used to hear through the wall; remembers watching Sasha and Nicklas move together under the blankets in Montreal. He imagines—at night, Sasha and Nicklas think he’s asleep. They reach for each other in the dark. 

Sanya touches his stomach under his sweater, feeling the smooth skin of his belly, the cut of his hips. 

Sanya imagines them kissing. Their mouths slow, open, wet. Sasha would pull Nicklas’s sweater off with impatient fingers, graceless, eager. His bright eyes burning. Nicklas’s hair tousled, tangled in knots of curls. His head tilted back as Sasha mouths at his small nipples, biting at the little peaks. What would Sasha’s teeth feel like? Jagged? Would he bite down hard? 

Sanya skirts his hand around his dick, jerking his hips up into thin air. Making himself wait.

The heavy muscles in Sasha’s back would shift as he moves over Nicklas. Nicklas would push at his sweatpants, forcing them over the swell of Sasha’s ass. Sanya imagines Sasha’s big dick. Nicklas’s soft hand around the heavy curve of it, Sasha’s mouth falling open.  

They’d be desperate. Sanya’s always around, so they never get the chance to fuck. Sanya knows how much they need it. Nicklas would be making little sounds in the back of his throat. Sasha would groan at every pass of Nicklas’s hand over the head of his cock. 

Sanya wraps his fingers around his dick and bites at the collar of his sweatshirt to keep himself from making a sound. He moves his hand. He’s going to fucking come so fast. 

Sasha would—he’d want more, he’d want to touch Nicklas. Suck Nicklas’s dick into his wet red mouth. Nicklas would twist mean fingers in Sasha’s thick hair and pull, and Sasha would—Sasha would— 

Sanya pants, hips jerking, and suddenly he can’t get enough air. Jesus, he can’t get enough _air_ —he lets go of his dick and clutches his chest, digging his fingernails into his skin, wheezing. 

Fuck, _fuck_. Sanya sits up and pulls his sweatpants over his dick—if he dies with his dick out, Christ—his heart pounding so loud he feels like he’s underwater. He’s sweating. The walls loom over him, pressing in, and he closes his eyes, pulls his knees up to his chest and forces his back up against the wall. His breath sounds noisy even to himself, gulping, gasping sounds. He can’t stop. He can’t make himself stop. It’s so loud.

The creak of the door. Sanya wants to shout _go away, leave me alone_ , but his throat won’t work, his mouth. He can’t stop wheezing. He digs his short nails into his palms. He wishes he hadn’t cut them; he wants the grounding sting of pain. 

“Sema? Sema, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” 

Sasha sounds frightened. 

Sanya wishes his throat would work. _Go away, go_ away _, fuck_. He was just _jerking off_ and thinking of _Sasha_ , god, and he couldn’t even do that right. He wants to cry from shame, from the horrible squalid humiliation of it. He wants to die. He wants to leave. He wants to scream _get out, get out, get out_. His heart goes faster, faster. He can’t breathe. Fuck, he can’t fucking _breathe—_

Sasha touches Sanya’s shoulder, and Sanya reacts immediately, violently, slapping Sasha across the face. _Crack_ , skin on skin. He watches his own hand like some alien thing. 

Sasha catches his wrist. He looks surprised, and then he looks—his eyes go big and liquid. Worried. Sad.

Sanya twists his arm until he’s free from Sasha’s grip. He holds his hands close to his body and kicks at Sasha instead, pushing him off the bed. “Fuck off,” he manages to say. “God just fucking, go. _Please_ , Sasha, _go_.”

Sanya’s sweatpants are pulled half off still. He can feel his blankets on his bare ass cheek. It’s horrible, horrible. 

Sasha’s skin is red from Sanya’s hand. “I’m not going to leave you,” he says, reaching out again. 

Sanya fumbles his way off the bed and around Sasha, adjusting his sweatpants. His cheeks go hot. His stomach knots in shame. “I’m going,” he says. “For a run. Alone.” 

Sanya rushes past whoever’s in the common room without looking. He kicks off his house slippers, grabs his running shoes and leaves in his sock feet. It’s not until halfway out of residential quarters that he stops to put his shoes on. His face is wet. His hands shake as he ties the laces. He pulls his sweatshirt hood over his head to shadow his face. 

This floor doesn’t have a lot of good hiding places, not outside of import quarters. Sanya takes the stairs and finds a supply closet off of an unused storage room. He wedges himself under the shelving. He burrows into his hood, pulls his hands into his sleeves and shuts his eyes tight. 

Sanya doesn’t know what time it is when he finally leaves the supply closet, but the sun is still up. It’s before dinner, probably. Sanya doesn’t want to go back into import quarters, so he weaves upstairs and then ducks out onto the roof deck. The air is good. Clean. Cold. Sanya takes a deep breath. 

“Hello,” Nicklas says. 

Sanya flinches. 

Nicklas is sitting at an outdoor table by the door, messing with something electronic. He stands up and tucks whatever it is into the pouch of his sweatshirt. 

“What are you doing here,” Sanya asks, for lack of any better options. He doesn’t care. He wants Nicklas to go away and leave him the fuck alone. 

He thinks about what he had imagined. Nicklas’s hand around Sasha’s big dick. The sounds he made. 

Nicklas chews the sleeve of his sweatshirt, watching Sanya. “Alex is worried.” 

Sanya’s eyes go hot and his nose stings. He wants to shatter every window in this building. He wants to scream until his voice gives out. He swallows and turns away to look over the city, the deserted vacant swamp of it. “I don’t care,” he says, and his voice comes out icy. Convincing. 

Nicklas sits on a low table and doesn’t say anything. 

Sanya wants a cigarette, but the imports don’t have shit anymore. Nobody has a day pass, so nobody has cigarettes, or extra food, or gum. Sanya’s desperate enough he’s considering asking Mike Green. He'd get Sanya some for sure; the only problem would be if he mentioned it to Brooks Laich. Sanya’s not in the mood for a lecture. 

Sanya presses his forehead against the cold glass of the windbreak. 

Nicklas is quiet. Sanya pictures him curled up inside his hoodie, his hands hiding in the sleeves. He’s probably chewing the collar. 

Sanya breathes against the glass and watches the fog from his mouth spread and recede. Something huge and hot and furious gnaws away at his chest. 

The windbreak isn’t only for the wind. The windbreak is so they don’t jump. 

Nicklas doesn’t say a damn thing. 

Sanya wonders what Nicklas would do if Sanya hit him. Nicklas is a vicious little asshole under his bland manners, under his golden curls. Sanya doesn’t know how anybody’s ever been fooled. Sanya wants to try it. Sanya wants to see if Nicklas will scratch him with his small hands, if he’ll go for Sanya’s eyes. 

“I need to get the fuck out of here,” Sanya mutters. He glances back at Nicklas. “You stole anybody’s day pass lately, Kolya? You got a ticket to fucking anywhere?” 

Nicklas bites his lip. “Yes,” he says.

Sanya pushes off the windbreak. 

“It’s not—it’s not out,” Nicklas says carefully. “But I think I have something.” 

If Sanya stays out here he’s a little afraid he’s going to bash his head into the windbreak until he passes out. He’ll try fucking anything. He takes a step forward. 

Nicklas keeps chewing his lip, eyes hesitant. “Yes?” 

Sanya raises his eyebrows, _obviously,_ and Nicklas gets to his feet in a hasty rush. He leads Sanya through residential quarters and across the skybridge into the the labyrinth of their practice facility.

“Let’s get Alex,” he says, and they both head in the direction of the big gym. 

Sasha's inside: baggy navy shorts and his wide bare chest, a big joyful grin as he hollers at Mike Green. They’re playing two-touch. Half the guys have already been eliminated. Sasha’s winning, so he’s happy. He looks happy. He’s smiling. 

Nicklas pauses in the doorway. It only takes a minute before Sasha notices them, and then Nicklas jerks his head towards the hallway. Sasha tosses the ball to Greenie and trots towards the door without Nicklas having to open his mouth. 

It's a neat trick. 

Sasha drapes a sweaty arm over Sanya’s shoulders. “Sema? You’re okay?” 

Nicklas glances at Sanya’s face for a brief, shrewd moment, and then looks at Sasha. “We’re doing an activity now, Alex.” 

Sasha keeps his arm around Sanya, pulling him closer as they walk. His body is hot, fragrant with sweat. “Okay. What are we doing?” 

Nicklas keeps walking. “You’ll see.” 

Sanya pauses outside of Nicklas’s intended destination. “More hockey? That’s your idea of a day pass?” 

Nicklas looks over his shoulder. His eyes are very pale green. “Not their hockey,” he says, and pushes the door open.  

Sanya, Sasha and Nicklas sit in their stalls and lace up their skates. Their knees look strange and skinny with no pads, their bodies all spidery limbs. 

The main lights are off in the practice rink. It’s nice. It reminds Sanya of when he was young, and him and the kids would bribe the rink guards with soda and pennies to get onto the ice in Chelyabinsk. Sanya takes a deep breath.

Nobody had skate today, and the ice is perfect. Glistening, clean. Sanya glides away from the boards and feels the world dissolve. 

Sanya’s leg doesn’t hurt on the ice. 

“Let’s play,” Nicklas says, and drops a puck. 

It’s bandy. It’s shinny. Sanya and Nicklas against Sasha, Sasha and Nicklas against Sanya, Sanya and Sasha against Nicklas, all three of them at cross-purposes, all three of them staging improbable plays together at breakneck speed. Dizzying, glorious. 

Sanya’s cheeks hurt and it takes him a minute to realise he’s smiling. He’s been smiling the whole time. 

Nicklas’s pale eyes dart in Sanya’s direction like the mosquitos that used to fill the taiga to capacity, flick flick flick, little bites. Nicklas is distracted and it’s easy for Sasha to catch him out, to check him up against the boards and send the puck flying towards Sanya. Sasha howls in glee, his prey caught, until his skates slip out from under him. Suddenly he’s splayed on the ice in shorts looking up at Nicklas with childish surprise. Sasha looks just like a little boy, and Sanya laughs until his chest aches, laughs until he nearly falls down to join him.

Sanya steals the schedule for the practice rink from the assistant coach’s office. He knows the staff would let them in if they asked, but he doesn’t want to ask. They would know, and then the dark empty rink would be ruined. 

* * *

Alex pretends not to notice Sema’s subtle limp, his brittle smile, the way he refuses to talk to anyone outside of import quarters. Alex gets them into the practice rink as much as possible and bullies Sema into smiling. He barters cigarettes from Mike Green. He moves all of their Russian books into the nest room, hides them in folds of blankets and drawers of unused desks.

Training camp starts in September, and the Navy gets two new imports, both goalies. Yasha, blond and Russian, and Michal Neuvirth, a Czech kid who guns right for the starter’s net. For the first few days Alex fusses over Yasha and Flash fusses over Neuvy, but they mostly seem interested in hanging out with each other. They choose rooms next to each other, and spend a lot of time playing table tennis in silence. Goalies.

Sema is aggressively unwelcoming with both of them. He exists within a thick permafrost shell that only melts in their room, or on the ice when the three of them play like their opposition may as well be so much mist. 

Boudreau doesn’t make Sema talk, and he keeps him on the top line. Alex plays twice as hard to thank him. 

The Navy open their season in Boston with a win so easy it feels like the Yellow are skating on slush. Alex wants to laugh every time he hits the ice with Sema and Nicklas. Their passes land tape to tape every time, a choreographed dance. Nicklas finds Sema at center ice, Sema leaves a blind drop pass for Alex, and Alex puts the puck in the net. They steal and sprint and rush the goal and the Yellow doesn’t stand a chance. 

By their last shift Alex does laugh. Delirious glee bubbles out of his chest, irrepressible. Some guy on the Yellow checks him for it, but Alex doesn’t give a shit. Let him try to win back his dignity somehow. 

"I've never been on a team like this before," one of the new Anglo guys says in the visitor's locker-room, after. "Top line does whatever they want and the rest of us play a system, eh? Well, if it works, it works." 

Alex would say it fucking works. Two goals and an assist for him, three assists for Nicke and two assists for Sema. They won the game so easy it was embarrassing. 

“Works pretty good, I think,” he says, grinning. “You see score sheet?” 

Brooks Laich snorts, peeling tape off his shins. "Get used to it, bud. Coach doesn't speak Russian." 

Nicklas’s face goes conspicuously stony. He unhooks his garters with jerky fingers, irritated. 

“If you want I can teach Coach how,” Alex offers, loud. He angles himself in front of Nicklas. “I know the good words he’s gotta learn, right?” 

Brooks frowns. “You know that’s against the law, O. You guys get away with talking Russian, that’s Coach’s call, but you can’t go spreading that around.” 

Alex really wants to roll his eyes. _Spread that around_. Like the flu. 

“I spread this around instead, Brooksie?” he asks, and chucks his sweaty elbow pads at Brooks’s head. “You smell that? That’s pure winner, babe.” 

Nicklas makes small irritated sounds in the back of his throat. He sounds like he has a cough. 

* * *

The Navy win their first two games by embarrassing margins, and then they lose four by a single goal each, and then they start to win again. Sema sits for two games, injured.

The Navy play the Blue & Grey and win, but eight penalties, so Boudreau’s not going to be thrilled. Nicklas knows without having to ask anyone—there won’t be any day passes for the imports yet. 

The Blue & Grey linger at their end of the ice, waiting to line up for the obligatory handshakes so they can go down the tunnel. The Navy go to pat Yasha’s helmet and congratulate him on the win. Number thirty-nine watches him intently, his face tracking Nicklas as he moves across the ice. 

He’s short in the handshake line, undersized for a defensemen. “Gävle?” 

Nicklas doesn’t answer. He shakes Thirty-Nine’s hand. He can’t tell if that look on his face is curiosity or something else. 

“You’re from there? Were you…” Thirty-Nine trails off, glancing behind him. 

Nicklas takes a breath and holds on to Thirty-Nine’s hand. He hasn’t heard Swedish since Nylander disappeared, except for the odd stolen word in the jigsaw Import language, or the handful of stock phrases Alex likes to deploy. “Was I what?” 

“Keep moving,” says their Russian star, number seventeen. Kovalchuk. He towers over Thirty-Nine. 

Thirty-Nine peers at Nicklas again, then drops his hand, skating on. 

Nicklas watches him. He wonders if there are other Swedes on the Blue & Grey. The Red & White has half a dozen; they must speak more Swedish in their import quarters than they do Import. Thirty-Nine is younger than most of them. He knows about Gävle. 

“No Sanya today?” 

Nicklas glances up at Kovalchuk, startled out of his thoughts. “Injured.” 

“Pity.” Kovalchuk shakes his hand, his grip strong. “Wish him good health from me.” 

Nicklas finishes the handshake line quickly, so he waits by the boards and watches Kovalchuk and Alex have a frantic, whispered conversation at the end of the line. 

“Kovy asked about Feds,” Alex tells Nicke under the cover of the tunnel. “He’s looking for someone. I told him, we’re practically on lockdown in the Navy.” 

“Is he? In the Blue & Grey?” 

Alex shrugs. “He didn’t say.” 

Nicklas doesn’t have media, not with his English, but he hears Brooks Laich’s sanctimonious drivel in the dressing room. He’s talking about Ted Leonsis. 

“I’ve known Mr. Leonsis for five, six years now, and I’ve never heard him tell a lie,” Brooks Laich says earnestly, rubbing his jaw. “He’s a very up-front and a very humble guy.” 

Nicklas turns to face his stall. Laich lays it on thicker than a blizzard drops snow on a field. He hasn’t said anything to Greenie about his Russian lately, probably because he’s playing so well. Strange, though. Why does a reporter want to ask Brooks Laich about Leonsis?

Leonsis hasn’t come see them at all so far this season. Nicklas remembers him last year, hanging over the boards chattering at Alex throughout the preseason, oily and comfortable. 

George McPhee gave a short, terse speech to the team before the home opener, but since then he’s steered clear of the dressing room. He looked older, greying, tired. 

Nicklas wipes his face on a towel and glances back at Brooks Laich. 

A reporter jostles for space. “Do you think the Navy can win with a roster dominated by so many imports?” 

Brooks Laich glances at Ovi and then at the reporter, grinning like an advertisement. “Well, they’re great offensive players, but you know the heart of the team isn’t just goals. The heart of this team is North American. We may have some flashy scorers, but we’re a working man’s team.” 

_So many imports_. Seven. Only four tonight, with Sema, Flash and Neuvirth injured and the Anglo Hershey goalie called up to ride the bench. So many imports: Alex, Nicklas, Juice and their rookie goalie, blond Yasha with his nervous eyes. _A working man’s team_. Nicklas wants to shove Brooks Laich into his own stall. 

Nicklas strips and heads for the showers, glowering at the tiles. 

Nicklas showers and dresses and leaves with Yasha. Yasha doesn’t say a word. He’s deep in his head, reviewing his play. He did fine. His save percentage wasn’t good, but the goalie for the Blue & Grey got pulled, so Nicklas figures it could be worse. 

_Maybe you should try to suck more, and get sent back to Hershey_ , Nicklas thinks at Yasha. There might not be steady heat in the minors, but nobody would make him go to Quiet Reflection. No Brooks Laich talking about _moral leadership_. 

Then again, maybe Yasha’s like Nicklas. Maybe he can’t help but want to win. 

Nicklas sighs and takes his shoes off in the entranceway of import’s quarters, then kicks aside a pile of spare shoes to locate his slippers. Yasha silently kneels down to reorder them. Nicklas wonders if that was a rookie duty last year. If it was, he didn’t know, and definitely didn’t do it.

Flash, Sema and Neuvirth are sprawled out in the common room, watching television and tossing a ball back and forth. They came straight back to import quarters after their stints in the press box, no need to shower or linger back with reporters. Alex had a line of microphones almost out the door. Nicklas has no idea how long he’ll be.

Flash waves Nicklas and Yasha over to the television. “We’re on Hockey Night,” he announces, with a bright, manic expression. 

Nicklas gets close, peering at Don Cherry. “What does he say?” 

“It’s Ovi,” Flash explains. “Two minute minor, and the guy’s acting like he lit up his stick and stabbed a linesmen.” 

“He’s saying slewfoot,” Neuvirth says. 

Sema sighs. “Barely a trip.” 

“Shhh, listen,” chides Flash. “The guy’s gone wild, I swear.” He turns up the volume. Tinny television audio crackles through the room. 

Don Cherry stares down the camera. “You’re running out of lives, I’ll tell you that right now. you won’t fight, you better be very careful out there. Guys have got you on a list. They’re gonna cut you in half.” 

Ron Maclean nods. “Shoulda been a suspension. He’s got a history; we just saw it.” 

“Well I’m not into that, what I mean is he’s gonna get it, and when he gets it it’s gonna be a goodie because he’s running out of lives.” Cherry slams his open palm down on the desk. 

_Some defenseman waiting in the weeds_. Nicklas’s heart speeds up. 

“Guys have you on a list,” Flash repeats in dumbfounded English. “Well if they didn’t, they sure do now.” 

“Is that normal?” Yasha’s pale eyebrows furrow together. He looks at Neuvy as if he knows any better than Yasha does. “Is he serious?” 

Nicklas grinds his teeth. The air feels very thin. Something huge and hot gathers in his ribs. He clenches his fists. 

Sema clears his throat. “Kolya, let’s go. Wrestle.” 

Nicklas glances at Sema, surprised. Sema heaves himself off the couch, groaning, and steers Nicklas out of the common area by the upper arm. Nicklas follows him to the nest room. 

Sema reaches past Nicklas to shut the hallway door. The world recedes. Nicklas sets up the alarm box. Habit assumes control of his robotic limbs. He feels very far away. 

“Neuvirth and Flash are good guys, but everybody talks when it’s their skin on the line,” Sema says conversationally, plucking a paperback from a makeshift shelf in the furniture wall.

Nicklas frowns. “I don’t understand.” 

Sema glances at Nicklas over his shoulder. His eyes look dark in the shadowy room, no trace of the green or grey that shows in the light. “I saw you steal that skate blade last season. You still have it?” 

Nicklas folds his arms over his chest. 

“Good. That was smart.” Sema turns back to his book and pieces through its yellowing pages. “But if you use it someday, you don’t want anybody saying you have a temper. _Oh, Nicklas, he fly into rage at Don Cherry_. No, keep everyone thinking you’re meek. Little Swedish mouse. Works hard, doesn’t give lip. _Nicky Bäckström never do, no way_.” Sema’s slow English, his almost impenetrable accent. He smiles. _“_ That’s what you want.” 

* * *

Sanya likes the train.

Even his first train, the three day journey that took him over the Urals and away from Krasnoyarsk forever, he liked. Sanya remembers sitting in his bunk with his face pressed to the cold window as the blaze of the world rocketed past. Endless taiga, glassy rivers, matchbook villages with washing hung on the line.

The trains in the Union are not so good, or at least the trains in the East. The East is flat, and there’s no samovar so there’s no hot noodles to slurp on while he watches the world. The seats face forward in neat little rows, joyless and austere as Sidney Crosby. 

The trains in the Union have rules. Only eat in the dining car. Don’t talk to strangers. Sanya couldn’t fend strangers off with a stick on any of his journeys back home. When Dynamo travelled for tournaments Sanya would hang back while Sasha immediately made friends with everyone in their car. Inevitably, one or two of them had chocolate or extra noodles. Sanya got to have some of the treat and not have to talk to people he didn’t know. It was an ideal arrangement. 

Sasha is as noisy as ever, but he obeys the Union rules. Sit still in the little box, although he can’t help but shout when he wins at cards, or loses. Nicklas is much better than he is. Sasha loses most of the time. He’s losing now, showy, all flirtatious cursing. 

The train rumbles on.

Sanya does love the North American sea. He knows which side of the train to sit on to glimpse the craggy green-grey waves, the distant places where the low clouds meet the horizon. There are shallow inlets where the waves freeze, but far out the sea keeps churning. 

Philadelphia looms in on them, unwelcome. Sanya doesn’t want to disembark. He wants to stay in the closed world of the train. 

“I almost beat you that time,” Sasha tells Nicklas, gathering the cards back in a messy pile. He squeezes out of his seat and makes his way towards the bathroom, bumping into everyone’s elbows, too big for the narrow aisle.

Nicklas squints out the window. “Is the city more…” Nicklas frowns, his forehead working. “Black, from hot… From burns?” Nicklas glances across the aisle at Sema, questioning. 

Sanya looks out at the city. A few buildings are scorched dusty black. Philadelphia houses sit in squat rows like a bookshelf, and a vacant building peers out, its charred windows like black eyes. He doesn’t think Philadelphia looked like this before. He nods at Nicklas, then looks out the window to see a charred husk of a bank, a construction zone half-completed, a street cordoned off. 

A checkpoint guard makes his way down the row of hockey players, his handheld machine clicking after each PerT tag he inputs. 

Nicklas looks like he wants to ask something else, but he shuts up, wisely.

The crowd at Wachovia is as rowdy as ever, but Sema thinks they seem angrier. Harder. Animated faces with that malevolent edge he remembers from the playoffs, when they screamed _go home Russians_ , _get out_. 

Sema leaves the ice quickly after warm-ups, thudding down the tunnel with long strides that aggravate his leg. He can sit another two games. What does he care? They already say he’s soft, undisciplined. He may as well get some rest out of it. 

“Sema?” 

Sanya flinches, but it’s only Sasha.

“Coach wants to talk to us and Nicky before.” Sasha brushes his messy hair out of his eyes, and then frowns. “You okay?” 

“Fine,” Sanya says, clipped, and turns away. 

Once Boudreau finds them Sanya holds his elbows tight, prepared to endure whatever tirade the man wants to deliver, but all Boudreau wants to do is to clap Sasha on the shoulder and give them long-winded advice. 

“If you want to play together, the three of you, you gotta play the right way, you got it? Don’t look to each other to be fancy. Be responsible defensively. Don’t just swan around, trying to be cute.” 

“Can’t help it, my face is just so cute all the time,” Sasha says promptly. “No, no, I’m joking. Yes, Coach. We will. We understand. We promise, right?” Sasha looks at Sanya and Nicklas, eyes hopeful. “We want to play together, the three of us.” 

Boudreau looks at Nicklas dubiously. “They understand what we’re saying, O? Defense? You need to translate?”

“No,” Nicklas says. “Defense.” His accent in English is better than Sanya’s now.

“Defense,” Sanya adds flatly.  

“Good. You’re a special line, great to watch, but you get caught up trying to make fancy plays and then what happens? Play the right way, and I can keep you together.” Boudreau squints at Sanya, mouth twisted. Sanya tries to keep his face as still as he can. “All right, good game, boys.” 

Sanya watches Boudreau leave, his sloped shoulders in his bad suit, the sweaty dome of his balding head. He loathes him, his squeaky shoes, the way spittle flicks from his mouth when he yells close to Sanya’s face.

“Hey, Sema.” Sasha turns Sanya around forcibly by the shoulders and shakes him. He’s beaming stupidly, gap-toothed and ridiculous. “Sanya. Sanyushka.” 

Sanya rolls his eyes. “What.” 

“Let’s play, Semka. Let’s just play our game.” 

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” Sanya tells Nicklas, who has gone pink and giggly, his laughing mouth hidden behind one hand. “He hasn’t started on you? Kolya. Kolyanka. Nikolasha.” 

Sasha’s face goes bright with delight and he pesters Nicklas with pet-names until until Nicklas is pink and trying to hit him, until they’re ushered out into the bowels of Wachovia, until they’re scrambling over the boards. 

God help Sanya, he does love to play with them. 

* * *

Alex fishes cans from the recesses of the cupboards and stacks them up to his chin, then swipes three forks from the silverware drawer.

“Hey,” Juice calls from the sofa. 

“It’s not yours, don’t worry,” Alex says, waving him off. “It’s gross anyway. You want…” He pulls back to examine the side of a can. He can’t read the letters, but the picture gives him a decent idea. “Blue fish with a yellow eye?” 

“Tuna,” Flash corrects him. “Nah. Be my guest.” 

“Maybe the kids want blue fish with a yellow eye,” Juice says. “Hey, kids. You want blue fish with a yellow eye?” 

Yasha catches his ping pong ball mid-air. Him and Neuvy glance at each other over the table, confused. 

“Be nice to the little goalies,” Alex admonishes, mock-stern. “I’m leaving Flash in charge.” 

Alex carries his stash to the nest room, finagles the door open one-handed and then curses when Nicke’s alarm box tips over in an avalanche of clattering metal. 

“Set it up again, Alex,” Nicke calls from the interior. 

Sasha groans. He wiggles his way through the gap in the furniture to dump the cans on the blankets between Nicke and Sema, and then wiggles back to fish all the little metal and glass things that go in the alarm box, and set the whole system up again. 

By the time he settles down in the bed, Sema is almost finished with a can of blue fish with yellow eye. 

“This is flaky, Nicklas will like it,” Sema says, pushing his fork up towards Nicke’s face. 

Nicke wrinkles his nose and rears his head back, like a startled cat. 

“That’s what you like right, when things have a kind of slimy texture. That’s your favorite thing, right, Kolya?” Sema waves his fork closer to Nicke, leaning across the blankets. 

Nicke grapples for Sema’s wrist, trying to force the fish back. 

“Why won’t you eat? Why won’t you let mama feed you?” Sema fends Nicklas off with his free hand, laughing. It degrades into a few seconds of slapping each other until Sema pulls the fork away and turns towards Alex. His face dances with devilish glee. “Maybe Sasha will eat it. Sasha eats everything. Here, Sasha, eat this.” 

Alex waits until Sema’s hand comes closer, and then wrests the fork from his hand to force the chunk of fish down the back of Sema’s t-shirt. Sema’s mouth drops open, comically betrayed, and Alex tips over, cackling. Sema snorts, and then they’re all laughing. Alex’s stomach hurts. 

“I’m not gonna shower and that smell is going to be your own fault,” Sema announces, getting to his feet. He holds his t-shirt tight at his waist, keeping the food trapped. 

“You’ll smell the same, then,” Alex says, an easy joke. 

Sema kicks Alex’s shin, and then smacks the back of Nicke’s golden head on his way out. Nicke punches him in the thigh. The alarm box rattles as Sema moves it around. The hallway door shuts. 

“He seems better.” Nicke peeks over his shoulder at Alex, a sliver of pale green iris. 

“Maybe,” Alex says. He touches Nicke’s hair. Leans forward to kiss his soft cheek, the corner of his mouth. 

“Alex,” Nicke says, and his voice is breathy. They haven’t been alone together in days. 

Alex kisses him. They fall into it, wet and messy and loud, and Alex doesn’t notice Sema come back into the room until the covers shift and rustle as he climbs into bed beside them. Alex pulls off of Nicke and rolls to the side, trying not to notice Nicke’s flushed face and dilated pupils. 

“Seems unfair,” Sema says, staring devotedly up at the ceiling. “Sasha gets to fuck and I don’t.” 

Nicke glances at Alex. “We could,” Nicke says, voice barely a whisper.

Alex’s heart pounds. Nicke tilts his head, questioning. Alex’s heart goes faster, faster. His dick swells in his sweatpants. He nods. 

Nicke rolls to his side to face Sema and edges his fingers near his arm. Sema flicks his eyes towards Nicke and doesn’t move. 

Alex is going to die. They’re going to be here all night while Sema and Nicke inch towards each other in the world’s slowest and most erotic game of chicken. 

“Come on.” Alex’s voice scrapes out of him, low and rough. He clears his throat. “Kiss him.” 

Sema goes from perfect stillness to a blur the same way he accelerates on the ice, a slow meander around the neutral zone to a breakaway in half a breath. Alex blinks and suddenly Nicke’s on his back and Sema is braced over him on his forearms. Sema looks at Alex, wide eyes all pupil. 

Alex wants to hump the mattress. Jesus, Sema, _kiss_ him. “Shit or get off the pot, Sanya,” he says, and grabs the swell of his dick over his sweatpants. 

Sema scoffs. He pushes damp curls off of Nicke’s flushed forehead with clinical fingers. “Maybe I won’t,” he says, looking down at Nicke. “Maybe I don’t want to.” 

Nicke’s eyes are huge. He has a look on his face like a call-up skating onto NHL ice for the first time. 

Sema is full of so much shit. “You’re full of shit,” Alex informs him. 

“I know he wants it.” Sema nips Nicke’s small ear and grinds their hips together, a long slow flex. 

Nicke gasps. He tilts his head back. His throat is long and pink. Alex watches, fascinated. He’s never seen Nicke like this. He’s never seen Sema like this either.

“He wants it bad. I can feel him.” Sema turns Nicke’s face to the side and sucks at his neck. “He’s hard.” 

Nicke isn’t the only one who wants it bad. Alex has never seen Sema fuck anybody but he knows under Sema’s veneer of calm he’s dying for it, knows he’s hard and wanting. Alex knows the look of Sema’s tightly coiled anticipation. He knows what it looks like when he’s about to score. 

Alex kicks his sweatpants down to touch his dick bare. “Take his shorts off.” 

Sema pulls Nicke’s shorts down his legs and stands up to get his sweatpants down. He pauses, looking down at Nicke, hard-on huge and obscene between his legs. 

_Holy shit, do they make them like that in Russia_ , all the North Americans say when they see Sema and Alex in the showers, in the locker room. _That thing’s a fucking monster, how do you walk with that between your legs_. Sema’s bigger than Alex soft, and he’s bigger than Alex hard. 

Alex swallows. “Nicky likes it when you touch his nipples.” 

Sema straddles Nicke’s hips. Nicke’s torso looks moon-pale and soft under Sema’s huge tanned hands, and Nicke’s mouth falls open when Sema twists his nipple hard and mean. 

“Kiss him, Sanya.” 

Sema holds himself very still for a long moment. Alex can see the second his resolve goes soft as summer ice. He presses his mouth to Nicke’s and Nicke sighs into it, his whole body unfurling under Sema’s hands, under his mouth.  

Alex’s hand blurs over his dick, sweet-sharp pleasure filling his body. 

Nicke curls a leg up over Sema’s hip and fists his hands in Sema’s long hair. Alex can see their mouths moving together, open and wet. 

Alex watches Nicke's small mouth, his sharp teeth. Sema pulls away to scrape his teeth along Nicke's neck, along his jaw. Nicke rolls his head to the side and looks at Alex, at his hand on his dick. He shakes his head. 

Alex slows his hand. He lets go of his dick, puts his hand on his thigh. 

Nicke's eyes go sharp and hot. He licks his lips. “Yes,” he says. “Good.” 

Alex is going to die. He flexes his fingers. His cock is so fucking hard. He doesn't touch. 

Sema does something to Nicke's earlobe and Nicke gasps, his eyes fluttering closed. 

Alex still doesn’t touch. Nicke doesn’t want him to touch. He fumbles in the narrow space between the mattress and the wall, groping the scattered mess of books and playing cards and tins of tobacco until he finds the oil he’d stashed there last week. 

Nicke watches him with hot eyes, Sanya busy biting his jaw. He lets his legs fall open. 

Alex feels dizzy. “Sanya, give me your hand.” 

Sema blinks at him, dazed. He sits back on his heels and offers his hand. 

Alex pours oil into Sema’s open palm. “He likes fingers inside. Get him wet.” 

Nicke shoves a pillow under his hips and plants his feet on the bed, spreads his legs open and shameless. 

Sema watches his fingers as he smoothes oil over Nicklas, mouth parted, like he can’t quite believe what he’s doing. Nicke watches Sema watch him and flushes blotchy pink down to his navel. 

Alex is so turned on he can barely breathe. His cock pulses on his belly. “Start with one.” 

Sema must be overwhelmed: he doesn’t roll his eyes in Alex’s direction, doesn’t offer even one sardonic aside. His face is shadowed, lower lip caught in his teeth. He slowly pushes his middle finger into Nicke. One knuckle, two. He slides halfway out and pushes back in. 

Nicke curls his toes up in the sheets. “Alex.” 

Alex knows. Alex knows what Nicke wants. “Now two.” 

Sema fucks two fingers into Nicke, eyes hot and fascinated. 

“Now curl them. Like this.” Alex crooks his fingers. He wants to push Sema’s hand away and demonstrate. He wants to feel the hot clench of Nicke’s body, he wants to make Nicke moan, but Nicke wouldn’t like that. Nicke wants him to stay put. Nicke wants him not to touch. Alex’s dick _hurts_. 

Sema narrows his eyes in concentration. He pushes his long fingers into Nicke until he gasps, his back arching up. He adds a third finger without Alex having to tell him to, and then does it again. His mouth curls up at the corners, smug. 

“Oh,” Nicke pants, “Ah, fuck.” He’s sweating, red. 

Alex shifts, mindful of his aching dick. “That’s good, Sanya. You’re good at that.” 

Sema inhales sharply and fucks Nicke faster, his free hand tight on Nicke’s splayed-open thigh. 

Nicke’s head lolls to the side. His eyes are fever-bright. “More,” he pants. 

Alex knows he’s not talking to Sema. “Your hands,” Alex croaks, his hips jolting up against nothing, looking for friction in the air. “Sanya, your hands look so good on him.” 

Sema makes a small noise in the back of his throat. He thrusts his hips, dick bumping up against Nicke’s big ass.

“Nicky, do you want—” Fuck. Alex digs his nails into his own thigh and breathes through a painful wave of arousal. “You want him to fuck you?” God, Alex wants that so bad. Alex wants to teach Sema how to do it like Nicke likes. Sema will like it, he’ll feel so good. 

Nicke reaches out to grab Alex’s arm in a punishing grip. “Fuck, Alex.” 

Sanya goes very still. He looks at Alex sidelong under the feathery shade of his eyelashes, shifting through twelve expressions at once, a face Alex can read like his own name. Alex feels an odd, tender impulse to stroke Sema’s hair.

“I’ll show you,” Alex tells him. “You’ll be good at it.” 

“If he wants it so bad,” Sanya mumbles, looking away. He fucks his fingers into Nicke hard, merciless. Nicke cries out. 

“Nicky,” Alex pleads, shuffling forward. “Nicky, can I—” 

“Yeah, yes.” Nicke throws his head back and says something sharp in Swedish, body trembling. 

Alex clambers around the bed until he’s pressed against Sema’s bare back, his chin on Sema’s shoulder. He’s stood that way a hundred times, a thousand, but never over the bowl of Nicke’s spread hips, never with Alex’s hard-on slipping deliriously against Sema’s ass. Alex puts his hand on Sema’s hot bare belly. Sema exhales shakily. 

“He’ll tell you if he’s ready. Ask him.” 

Sema twists his fingers. “You ready?” 

“Yes,” Nicke says. His eyes dart from Sema to Alex and back again, glassy.  

Alex reaches around Sema’s hip and gently tugs his wrist until his fingers slide out of Nicke’s body. Nicke makes a brief, frustrated sound and wiggles his hips over the blankets. Normally Nicke would be swearing right now, possibly shoving him over and climbing onto his dick himself. Or he would with Alex. Not with Sema. Nicke squirms and waits and takes his impatience out on the sheets. 

Alex reaches for the oil. He pours it into his open palm, his arms wrapped around Sema. “You have to be wet,” he murmurs. Desire makes him dizzy. He feels delirious, unhinged. He slicks Sema up. Sema gasps and lets him, his fingertips digging into Nicke’s soft inner thighs. Alex presses Sema forward and guides the thick head of his cock up against Nicke’s puffy hole. 

“Inside,” Alex croaks, and together they press into the clutch of Nicke’s body. Nicke’s eyes flutter shut. Sema shakes in the circle of Alex’s arms. 

“Don’t come,” Nicke tells Alex, fixing him with a hard look, and then he throws his head back and gives himself over. 

Alex helps Sema fuck Nicke, slow deep thrusts that make him writhe and groan. 

“I’m going to—Sasha, I can’t—” Sema’s voice is thready, desperate. 

Alex reaches for Nicke’s slick pink dick. “Keep going,” he says, sliding his thumb over the smooth head. “Keep going, he’s almost there.” 

Sema fucks in hard, grinding his hips. Nicke sweats and curses and comes, his dick pulsing deliciously in Alex’s hand. 

“You can now, Sanya,” Alex breathes into the curve of Sema’s ear, and Sema shakes, mouth open, silent. He pulls out, and Alex can’t stop looking at the puffy red rim of Nicke’s hole. Sanya’s come inside, leaking out. He wants to—he doesn’t know if that’s something anyone does, if it’s disgusting, if it’s bad, but he wants to put his mouth there. He wants to taste him. 

Alex jolts and pulls himself away from Sema’s warm pliable body. He’s going to fucking come. He grips the base of his dick and wills his orgasm away. 

Nicke watches him with an almost terrifying intensity. His soft wet dick twitches on his belly. “Good, Alex.” 

Alex groans. 

Sema chews his lip. He glances at Nicke, at Alex, and then moves so fast Alex can barely blink before Sema’s mouth is on Alex’s dick. Hot, wet suction. 

“Fuck,” Alex nearly shouts, grabbing Sema’s hair. “Fuck, fuck—Nicky, please, please, can I—”  

“Yes,” Nicke says immediately, “Yes, yes, do it.” 

Alex spills into Sema’s mouth. Sema grips Alex’s thighs and swallows, choking a little but refusing to stop. 

“Jesus,” Alex groans, when he comes back to himself. “Fuck.” 

Nicke kicks his foot. “Stop talk,” he mumbles, fumbling to wipe himself off with a discarded t-shirt. “Sleep.” 

Alex pulls the blankets out from underneath them and settles down in a sweaty heap, hooking one leg over Nicke and shoving the other up against Sema. Dim light glints from Sema’s open eyes. He doesn’t move. 

“Sleep,” Alex tells him softly. “It’s just us. You can sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in what I changed and what I did not change you can read about part one [over here](https://waspabi.tumblr.com/youngguns), and then specifics for this part [over here](https://waspabi.tumblr.com/morelikewar). It may also interest you to have a key to the in-universe names of the teams which can be found at the end of the post [here](https://ionthesparrow.dreamwidth.org/473.html). There's also a playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/shesupintrees/playlist/0kd2Gr34Jvi51ZVnyXdXi6?si=oNgjtp5JR0eu01NrI0OwOA), and a tag for this series [here](http://waspabi.tumblr.com/tagged/young-guns).
> 
> I love any and all inquiries about this tale as I am an insufferable talker, so please do feel welcome.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [sometimes you spend your evening drawing Alexander Semin.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17806664) by [runwithneedles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runwithneedles/pseuds/runwithneedles)




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